


Something Different

by sirkay



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Background Wolfstar, Coming Out, Friendship, Gay Charlie Weasley, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Lesbian Minerva McGonagall, Mentor Minerva McGonagall, Mentor Remus Lupin, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Nymphadora Tonks, Questioning, References to Depression, Some angst, lots of funky hairstyles, supportive family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27492970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirkay/pseuds/sirkay
Summary: Nymphadora was always a strange child. It wasn’t just the metamorphmagus thing. Sure, the ability to change her appearance at will certainly gave her much more opportunity to express her bizarre nature, but it wasn’t the source of it. No, there was just something different about her, something she could never quite hide.Tonks figures out their identity over their seven years at Hogwarts, and finds love and support in likely and unlikely places.
Relationships: Nymphadora Tonks & Charlie Weasley
Comments: 11
Kudos: 31





	Something Different

**Author's Note:**

> This story is close to my heart as a nonbinary writer. Yes, it's a little bit of revenge against J.K. Rowling but really it's about telling a story that in some way mirrors my own journey. Because it's about the process of figuring out gender, which is often messy and confusing, I use she/her pronouns for Tonks until the point in the story when they are ready to accept they/them pronouns. There is no transphobia in this story!! Not everyone understands Tonks, but they all try to support them the best they can.
> 
> The first time I heard someone headcanon Tonks as nonbinary was in a comic by Maia Kobabe. Eir work inspired me, so you should totally check em out! @redgoldsparks on Instagram and Tumblr, or just look em up, e is the author of the graphic memoir Genderqueer :)

Nymphadora was always a strange child. It wasn’t just the metamorphmagus thing. Sure, the ability to change her appearance at will certainly gave her much more opportunity to express her bizarre nature, but it wasn’t the source of it. No, there was just something  _ different _ about her, something she could never quite hide. 

The year Nymphadora started Hogwarts, she changed her hair color every day. It baffled the professors for a while, and Professor McGonagall even attempted to forbid it.

“I’m sorry, but it’s simply too distracting,” she said. “You must pick one hairstyle and stick with it for the remainder of the year.”

“Fine,” Nymphadora said. The hairstyle she selected was a bright red spiky mohawk so tall that it proved hazardous to passerby every time she turned her head. When McGonagall said her hair could be no higher than two inches off her head, she grew curls in such a bright shade of blonde it actually reflected light and temporarily blinded the other students in the classroom. And when McGonagall said her hair had to be an ordinary color, she grew it so long it tripped people in the hallways.

Eventually Dumbledore stepped in and said that Nymphadora was allowed to wear whatever hairstyle she liked, and change it as frequently as she liked, as long as it did not pose a danger to any of her classmates. Nymphadora was quite pleased with herself.

Halfway through second term that year, a shy Gryffindor approached Nymphadora and told her he liked her hair.

“I wish I could change mine every day,” he said. “Mum just puts a bowl on my head and cuts around it every couple months.”

The boy’s ginger hair was, indeed, rather bowl-shaped.

“You don’t have to be a metamorphmagus to change your hair,” Nymphadora said. She dragged the boy to the Hufflepuff common room, ignoring the scandalized looks of the other Hufflepuffs, and produced an enormous pair of scissors. “Now, I’ve never done this before, so hold still.”

In the end, the boy, who was called Charlie, had to be taken to Madam Pomfrey. He wasn’t injured, but his brutalized hair was such a terrible sight to behold that he wouldn’t stop crying. Nymphadora tagged along after, apologizing profusely. 

“I thought it would be easy!”

To prevent any further hair-tastrophes, Madam Pomfrey taught both children a few simple hairstyling spells. That cheered Charlie right up, and he practiced on himself in front of the mirror all evening. When Nymphadora saw him in the Great Hall the next morning, his red hair was shoulder-length and gathered up into a ponytail right smack on top of his head. There were snickers all along the hall, but Nymphadora leapt right up and ran to the Gryffindor table to hug him.

“It looks amazing!” she cried. 

For the next month, Nymphadora and Charlie wore matching hair. First Nymphadora copied Charlie’s style, but as Charlie taught himself more and more complicated hair charms out of the Cosmetology section of the library, they grew more adventurous. There was a week of identical pink pigtails, a week of short green curls, and two days of baldness that ended when Charlie got a particularly bad sunburn on his scalp. 

By the end of the year, they were officially known as the two weirdest kids at Hogwarts. They were also widely regarded as a matched set. Where Nymphadora went, Charlie followed. Where Charlie went, Nymphadora wasn’t far behind.

Andromeda had never quite known what to do with her wayward child. Having been brought up in quite a strict household, Andromeda had always worn her hair exactly the same way, and she favored demure robes in dark colors. Her husband, Ted, laughed at Dora’s antics and never made a fuss about it. But sometimes Andromeda just couldn’t help herself. 

“ _ Really _ , Dora?” she said, when her child came downstairs on the morning she was meant to leave for her second year of Hogwarts sporting a shaggy mop of purple hair that made her resemble nothing so much as a dyed sheep.

“Ugh, Mum, do you  _ have _ to criticize  _ everything _ I do?” Dora cried. But she stomped back upstairs and came down a few minutes later with a plain brown bob. She sulked the rest of the morning, and Andromeda was torn. She was glad Dora had changed her hair— after all, she didn’t want her to be teased. But her obvious misery tugged at Andromeda’s heart. Was she too much like her own mother, too controlling?

“Bye, my love,” Andromeda said, kissing the top of Dora’s head and ushering her onto the train.

“Don’t forget to write!” Ted called.

“Bye, Dad,” Dora said pointedly. “I won’t.” She disappeared down the corridor of the train, and when Andromeda glimpsed her through one of the windows, she saw that Dora’s hair had become a violet monstrosity once more. She sighed, and Ted put his arm around her shoulders.

“It’s all right, darling. Our little Dora will be just fine.”

“Do you remember the war?” Charlie asked one evening during their third year, when he and Nymphadora were curled in a chair in the Gryffindor common room. (The members of both Gryffindor and Hufflepuff houses had long become accustomed to the presence of one or the other of the duo in the incorrect common room).

“Kind of,” Nymphadora said, leaning her head against Charlie’s shoulder. Nobody liked to talk about the war anymore, especially not the adults. Nymphadora was painfully curious about it, but she had long ago learned not to ask too much; if she did, she would be snapped at or told to run off and play. “I remember hearing Mum and Dad whispering in the kitchen. About leaving the country. Cause my dad’s Muggle born.”

“My parents used to go out sometimes at night,” Charlie said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Bill asked Mum where she was going once and she said it was an important meeting. But whenever one of them would go, they would come back so...tired. Sometimes they’d come back in the morning when we were all eating breakfast, like they’d been gone all night. Once I came downstairs really late at night and I saw Dad trying to heal some sort of burn on Mum’s arm. Like from a spell.”

“They were part of the Order,” Nymphadora said. It wasn’t a question. Nymphadora knew all about the Order. She had read every pamphlet she could get her hands on, had scoured every photograph in the secret wartime issues of _The_ _Quibbler_. She knew the names of the fallen: Marlene McKinnon, Dorcas Meadowes, the Prewett brothers…

“My uncles were too,” Charlie said. That’s when Nymphadora remembered that Molly Weasley was a Prewett by birth.

“Oh.” She tugged her arm free and looped it around Charlie’s shoulder. He stared into the fire, the orange light reflecting glassy in his eyes. “If there was an Order again, would you join it?” Nymphadora asked.

Charlie was silent for a long time. Nymphadora, growing impatient, was about to pose the question again when he answered. “I wish I was brave enough,” he said. “I might be too scared.”

Nymphadora pondered that for a moment. She had never doubted that if the Order still existed, she would join. Sometimes she even wished a new evil would arise so she would have the chance to fight alongside the bravest witches and wizards in all of England. For the first time, she wondered if maybe that was a selfish wish.

“You’re brave,” she said to Charlie. “You’re very brave.” 

Charlie shrugged, and Nymphadora wished she knew how to convince him it was true. 

A few months into third year, Nymphadora decided she had finally had enough of her name. For one thing, it was  _ so _ old-fashioned. And it wasn’t even a  _ pretty _ old fashioned name like Andromeda or Druella. 

But more importantly the name just didn’t  _ fit _ . Everytime someone said ‘Nymphadora,’ Nymphadora’s skin crawled just a little. 

So at the beginning of Transfiguration one day, while the rest of the students were still unpacking their books and Professor McGonagall stood at the lectern, shuffling through her notes, Nymphadora raised her hand. She held it high even as the students around her began to snigger and whisper. Finally, Professor McGonagall looked up. When she saw whose hand was raised, she looked very tired.

“Yes, Ms. Tonks?”

Nymphadora lowered her hand. “Professor, I just want to say that I’m going by Tonks from now on. I don’t want anyone to call me Nymphadora.”

“Ms. Tonks, there will be time to discuss your personal preferences after class. Now will you please—”

“Excuse me, professor. Could you not call me ‘Ms.’?”

Professor McGonagall blinked. Tonks, too, was a little surprised. She hadn’t realized she was going to say that. 

“I’m sorry, but what would you prefer I call you?”

Tonks felt heat rising in her face, but she knew it was too late to back down. Chin held high, she said, “Just Tonks please.” 

Professor McGonagall sighed. “Class, if you would please turn your attention to page 34 in your textbook…”

Tonks was distracted— even more than she usually was— for the rest of class. She wondered if anyone would listen to her. Would people make fun of her for wanting to go by her last name? It wasn’t unusual, it just wasn’t common for someone to make so blatant a request. And then there was the whole ‘Ms.’ business. Tonks wasn’t sure why the title bothered her. Every student at Hogwarts was ‘Ms.’ or ‘Mr.’ to the professors. What exactly had she expected?

After class, Charlie rushed to meet Tonks in the corridor.

“Did you do it?” he asked, breathless. He had recently given himself an undercut, and there was a thick swoop of ginger hair on top of his head. 

“I did,” Tonks said, pushing aside her doubts. “Now we just have to see if it takes.”

Luckily, it seemed that no one at Hogwarts liked the name Nymphadora any more than Tonks did. Word spread quickly, and within a week everyone was calling her Tonks.

Unfortunately, Tonks’s mother did not take to the change as easily. When Tonks started signing her letters that way, Andromeda wrote back sternly.  _ It’s improper to sign your letters with only your last name.  _ But when Tonks came home for the summer and started insisting on being called Tonks in person, Andromeda’s tone changed.

“Darling, I don’t understand. It’s a lovely name! I gave it to you for a reason. Is it the other children? Do they tease you?”

“Ugh, Mum, I just don’t like it, okay?”

“What about Dora? Can I call you Dora?”

Tonks glowered. She didn’t really like her nickname either, though she didn’t know why. It wasn’t old and clunky like her full name, but it just didn’t fit.

“Dromeda,” Ted said consolingly, later that night, when the two of them were alone. “Let her do what she likes. She’ll probably grow out of it.”

Andromeda sighed. She knew her child; Dora was not the sort who grew out of things easily. She was far too stubborn. In odd, painful moments she reminded Andromeda of a young Narcissa— that wilful temper; that bright, hard laugh. But only in flashes. The child Andromeda’s sister had been no longer existed. It was strange, how you could mourn for someone who was still alive.

Tonks hadn’t realized how much could change in a summer. When she returned for her fifth year, the Charlie who greeted her looked like a whole new person. He had joined the Quidditch team his previous year and, to everyone’s surprise, excelled at it. Though he was Seeker, the rigorous training had added some heft to his skinny frame. To top it off he seemed to have grown half a foot over the summer, and his voice was suddenly rough and deep. He nearly knocked Tonks off her feet when he hugged her.

At first Tonks thought the mixed up feeling in her gut from seeing Charlie was because she fancied him. It would make sense— everyone already thought the two of them would date someday. But when Tonks tried to imagine kissing Charlie, it felt all wrong and she wanted to climb in the bath and scrub the thought away. He was like a brother.

She decided the feeling was jealousy. Charlie was a Prefect now. He had his Quidditch friends, and he didn’t need Tonks the way he used to. Besides, he was...growing. Growing into a body that fit him like a glove. That wasn’t how Tonks felt.

It wasn’t that Tonks hadn’t grown or changed. She’d gotten taller over the summer (a measly two inches) and started her period during exams the previous year (a nightmare). Soon she would need to use a resizing charm on her bra, because it was starting to pinch under her arms. She was growing. So why did she feel so small?

Charlie seemed so happy most of the time. Tonks was surprised when she came down from dinner one night and found him standing outside the Hufflepuff common room, waiting, his shoulders slumped. He flushed pink when he saw her.

“Hey,” he said. “Can I...show you something?”

Tonks brought him up to her dormitory and closed the hangings of her bed around the two of them. When they were completely alone, Charlie reached into his bag and drew out a book with a shiny blue cover. 

“A book?” Tonks asked, unable to keep the incredulity from her voice. Charlie’s flush deepened.

“I found it in the library. It...well, just look at it.”

Tonks held it closer to the light. The title, emblazoned in gold, read:  _ A Queer Wizard’s Guide to Love and Life _ .

“What does that mean?”

“I read a bit of it,” Charlie said. “Queer means...you know. Like, the rumors about McGonagall.”

“That she goes out at night to fight with strays?”

“That she’s  _ gay _ .” Charlie all but whispered the word, and the bottom fell out of Tonks’s stomach. This was a book about  _ those things _ . 

She had heard the rumors that McGonagall’s roommate was not just her roommate. She had heard whispers of boys who kissed late at night in their dormitories, and the scandalous gossip about what Gilderoy Lockhart got up to during his heroic exploits. She laughed or rolled her eyes along with everyone else, but always she felt the same sense of vertigo, somewhere between terror and elation.

For an instant, panic overtook her.

“Why are you showing it to  _ me _ ?”

Charlie looked stricken. “I— it’s just— it’s silly, I guess I was just curious—”

He reached for the book, his face tomato red, and Tonks realized that this wasn’t about her at all. She pulled the book out of Charlie’s reach and flipped open the cover. Inside was a beaming portrait of the author, a witch with slate gray hair and a wide, cheeky grin. It winked at Tonks, and gestured for her to turn the page. She did.

“Tonks,” Charlie said, sounding pained. “Really, you don’t have to…”

“Let me read!”

Tonks turned to the introduction and tuned out everything else. When she reached the bottom of the page, she looked up again.

“I didn’t know there were so many ways of being like that,” she said. New words swam in her mind, alongside old words that seemed to shimmer in a new way: bisexual, gay, queer, trans.  _ Some people like sex with one gender, some with another. Some people like sex with any gender, and some people don’t like sex at all. The wonderful thing is, none of us are wrong!  _ And it wasn’t all just about  _ sex _ (the word still made Tonks blush). It was about love and...what kind of person you wanted to be. Boy or girl or...or what?

“Does it scare you?” Charlie asked, dragging Tonks from her thoughts. Tonks blinked at him, forgetting, for a moment, that he had no idea what was going on in her head. Scared? Tonks had never been more scared in her life. No— that wasn’t true. Her heart was pounding, pounding in her chest. But what she felt was more like a deep, almost unbearable longing. If only she were one of those people.

“I’m not scared,” she said. “Charlie. Is there something you want to tell me?”

Tears welled instantly in Charlie’s eyes, and Tonks realized he wasn’t all that different from the little boy who had approached her in the corridor four year ago. She reached for his hand and squeezed it tightly.

“I think I might be gay,” Charlie said.

Tonks shoved the book aside and pulled Charlie into a bone-crushing hug. “Charlie! You goof. I love you.”

Charlie, his face pressed into Tonks’s shoulder, made a muffled sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “I love you too, weirdo.”

They stayed there a long time, laughing and talking and teasing each other, just like the old times. Tonks begged Charlie to tell her who he fancied and he blushed so hard it looked almost painful. Charlie tried to turn it around on her, but Tonks changed the subject quickly. It was far too confusing to think about fancying someone. 

Finally it grew late, and the rest of the girls started trickling into the dormitory. Charlie gathered up his things to go, and Tonks had the sudden urge to ask him to leave the book. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she just couldn’t get them out. And then he was gone, pursued by the scandalized shrieks of the girls who hadn’t even realized he was there.

Tonks lay back on her bed, feeling strangely hollow.

She waited a week before she went looking for the book. After all, Charlie probably wouldn’t return it to the library right away. And she kept losing her nerve. But finally, on a quiet Saturday afternoon when Charlie was out on the Quidditch pitch and (it seemed) the whole rest of the school was enjoying the fine weather on the grounds, Tonks crept into the library. She was too embarrassed to ask Madam Pince for help (what would she say?) so she snuck from shelf to shelf, looking for that distinctive blue cover. 

When she found it she glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then stuffed it in her bag and scurried out of the library without checking it out properly. Back in the empty dormitory, she sequestered herself behind her bed hangings and began to read.

She read and read until the rest of the girls in her year returned to get ready for dinner. Then, after a quick meal scarfed down alone at the Hufflepuff table, she raced back to the dormitory. She read late into the night. When she finally reached the end of the book, it was past three in the morning. Her eyes stung and her head was swimming. She wished there was more to read. She needed to chase that feeling— the vertigo, the precipice of longing and fear. 

_ But what on Earth does it have to do with me? _ Could Tonks possibly be...like that? In one way or another? There were so many ways. Or did she just wish she was a part of it all?

She held her lit wand up to the back cover and, with one finger, traced the little bookplate stuck there. It had a note in Madam Pince’s severe handwriting:  _ This book generously donated by R. Lupin, 1980 _ . 

Tonks wondered, not for the first time, why all of this was such a secret. She had heard of being gay before, in whispers. But if it was all true, if people could be bisexual and asexual and even  _ trans _ , why was it hidden away in just one book in the Hogwarts library? Why had her parents never mentioned it, why had no one ever said a word?

The only reason she could think of was that it was something shameful, something better left unsaid. Maybe it was something you could be if you had to, but if you could avoid it, wasn’t it better to just keep being normal?

Tonks shut the book and stuffed it under her bed. She would return it in the morning. A part of her never wanted to part with it, but the thought of Madam Pince reporting the book missing and it being found in her possession...Tonks shuddered. She would return it in the morning.

Everyone noticed the change in Tonks, including Professor McGonagall. It came swiftly, if not suddenly. She started wearing her hair long to cover more of her face, and it rarely deviated from a series of drab colors. She became more subdued and stopped speaking up in class. Professor McGonagall would have thought that would be a relief, but she found there was a little knot of anxiety in her chest that tightened every time she looked at Tonks. Something wasn’t right. 

She was tidying up after class one afternoon when Charlie Weasley came scurrying into the room. Bill’s younger brother rarely scurried anymore— he had quite grown into himself, but there were little flashes of his eleven-year-old self. McGonagall struggled not to smile every time she noticed.

“Professor?” Charlie said, hands clasped anxiously behind his back. “Can I talk to you about something?”

“Is it related to classwork, Mr. Weasley?”

“Well, no…”

“Then I suggest you speak with Madam Pomfrey.”

“But Professor—” He looked pained. McGonagall felt an unwelcome twitch of regret. “I don’t think Madam Pomfrey can help.”

He looked so earnest, with Molly Weasley’s no-one-says-no-to-me eyes and that ridiculous ponytail, an obvious homage to his older brother. Professor McGonagall sighed.

“Follow me to my office, Mr. Weasley.” 

When they reached her office, McGonagall took a seat behind her imposing desk, and Charlie perched across, his eyes darting around the room as if afraid something would jump out from behind the bookshelves and bite him. 

“Have a biscuit,” she said sharply, pushing the tin in Charlie’s direction. Looking startled, Charlie took one and bit into it timidly. Almost at once his posture relaxed. Angela’s biscuits always had that effect on people, though she swore there was no magic in them. “Now. What was it you wished to discuss?”

McGonagall had a feeling she knew what it was. Charlie and Tonks were inseparable friends after all; perhaps a bit more separable than they had used to be, but still quite close. As usual, her instincts were correct.

“It’s Tonks,” Charlie said. “She’s just not herself lately. She’s always in the dormitories, she doesn’t come to my Quidditch games anymore and she skips meals sometimes. She’s just...not herself.” 

His voice was urgent, straining to communicate something he couldn’t quite get across in words. McGonagall sympathized with the feeling.

“And you feel that if you brought this up to Madam Pomfrey she would dismiss it as the usual adolescent difficulties?”

“Yes!” Charlie sat up straighter. “It’s not something normal. I don’t think, anyway.”

“Well, Mr. Weasley, I admire your determination to help your friend. And I trust your assessment.” McGonagall sighed. She recognized the softening feeling in her chest; it had happened before. She was about to  _ relent _ . Angela was going to be so smug about this. “I will...endeavor to speak with Ms. Tonks before the end of term.”

Charlie’s whole face brightened. “Thank you, Professor McGonagall!”

McGonagall sighed again. “Have another biscuit, Mr. Weasley.” 

When he was gone, McGonagall unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk with a flick of her wand. She pulled out the neatly tied stack of letters that resided there and undid the tartan ribbon that held them together, pulling them out to read one by one. She did this every now and again, against her better judgment. They were from former students, every last one.  _ You have no idea how much it meant to me to be able to talk to you when I was at Hogwarts...I don’t know what I would have done without you...Give Angela my best...You have a kinder heart than you know _ .

The question was, as it always had been, how did they always know? How did they know to come to her? 

When the warmth in her chest reached intolerable levels, McGonagall tied the letters up again and shoved them back in their drawer. Perhaps it was a mystery better left unsolved.

McGonagall did try to speak to Tonks before the end of term. Tonks was reticent, stubborn, sullen. She refused to even acknowledge that something had changed about her. Whatever was eating her up inside, she wasn’t ready to let it out yet. 

Another piece of wisdom McGonagall had gained in all her years of teaching: you could not reach a student who was not ready to be reached. 

But that didn’t mean you stopped trying.

Andromeda was worried. The worry had built a home inside her, just beneath her ribcage, and she could never quite forget it. Just when she thought she was distracted from it the worry began to clamor inside its little house, impossible to ignore. Like an obnoxious neighbor who insisted on using a caterwauling charm to call the children in for dinner, or who rode their enchanted motorcycle down the street at all hours of the night.

At first, Ted tried to calm her down. “Dora’s just being a teenager,” he said.

But after a few weeks, even he began to notice. The spark was missing from their child.

Andromeda’s first instinct was anger. Why did Tonks insist on making such a fuss about everything? A proper witch knew to hold her emotions close to the chest. Tantrums were for children.

But that voice belonged to Andromeda’s mother, and Andromeda was  _ not _ her mother. She had sworn on the day she knew she was pregnant that she  _ would not be _ her mother.

So she went to Tonks’s room and knocked softly on the door, taking the grunt she got in response as permission to enter. 

She tried to coax Tonks into talking. She complimented her, she asked about school, she brushed a gentle hand through her thin, pale hair and wondered aloud why she had given up on bright colors.

“I thought you didn’t like it when I did that,” Tonks said.

Andromeda’s heart spasmed painfully. She asked, tentatively, if Tonks might want to speak to a Mind Healer. Tonks refused. She said she was fine. She forced a smile on her pale face and kissed her mother’s cheek. Her eyes showed that she desperately wanted Andromeda to leave.

The moment the door closed between them, Andromeda began to cry. 

It was a letter from Andromeda that prompted Professor McGonagall into action. McGonagall remembered Andromeda Black, the plump middle child. She did not excel like her younger sister Narcissa, and she lacked her elder sister’s talent for manipulation and inspiring fear. She was quiet and obedient, a reluctant Slytherin. (McGonagall always thought the Sorting Hat put too much stock in lineage; Andromeda Black was a Hufflepuff if there ever was one, but far too shy to ask for it). But she had a surprising kindness about her, a trait she did not even seem to recognize in herself that emerged in odd moments— like the time she traded toucans with a boy who had been utterly unable to change the bird’s colors, taking his bottom marks for no apparent reason other than pity.

Her child took after her in no other way than that kindness, which manifested differently in Tonks but was just as unhesitating.

Andromeda, too, was concerned for the child. McGonagall, reading the letter at the kitchen table, felt the tremors of a softening in her chest and sighed.

“What is it?” Angela called from the kitchen of the cottage they shared in the summer. “Another letter from a student?”

“No,” Mcgonagall said. “Even worse.”

All the same, she reached for a quill and parchment to call upon someone who might be better equipped for this than she was.

The first letter reached Tonks in the Hufflepuff common room. She was curled in one of the many window seats, staring out at a view enchanted to show a shimmering green valley with mountains in the distance. Her thoughts were dim and distant, and she savored the numbness as a respite from everything else. She barely registered the small commotion that occurred when an owl barrelled in through the common room door and settled itself on the mantle.

“Tonks, I think it’s for you,” someone said.

It was indeed. Tonks retrieved the letter from the strange owl and took it back to the window seat, examining the unfamiliar handwriting on the outside. Then she unrolled it and settled in to read.

_ Dear Tonks, _

_ We haven’t met, but I’ve heard that’s what you prefer to be called. My name is Remus Lupin. I left Hogwarts ten years ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long already) and, though I loved it, I did not always have the easiest time there. You may have guessed by now that Professor McGonagall requested I write to you. For all her wisdom, it has been a long time since she was sixteen, and she thought I might have more to say to you. I hope you won’t be embarrassed or find this insulting. You are not the first student I have written to since I graduated, and you won’t be the last. For all the castle’s wonders, it is quite easy to feel alone there. It is quite easy to get lost— both literally and otherwise. _

_ Let me introduce myself a little. First of all (and it is always first of all) I am a werewolf. I was once a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Currently, I am an archivist who takes a monthly vacation and hopes his boss doesn’t grow suspicious. (I apologize— I enjoy my little lycanthrope jokes). I live in London with my boyfriend and our son, who arrived most unexpectedly in our lives a few years ago. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, please feel free to ask.  _

_ I don’t know much about you, and I won’t presume to know what has been troubling you the past few months. Perhaps even you don’t have a name for it. There is no shame in that, just as there is no shame in suffering. But there is also no shame in asking for help, even if you are not entirely sure what you need.  _

_ There is no obligation to return this letter. If you are interested in corresponding, though, please do. I don’t write out of pity— I truly enjoy getting to know the students of my old school. You can talk to me about anything you like or nothing at all. Anything you say to me will be held in the strictest of confidences.  _

_ I hope to hear from you soon. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Remus Lupin _

Tonks read the letter four times. It broke something open inside her, and when she finally picked up a quill, the words poured out.

She wrote about the library book that Remus himself had donated. She wrote about how she didn’t know if she liked boys or girls or both or anyone, and how she had become obsessed with the  _ not knowing _ . Her mind went in circles trying to figure it out and in the end she just felt ashamed. Ashamed for not knowing, ashamed for daring to think she was special, ashamed for being different. 

She even wrote about the most fearful of all her thoughts, the thought that only snuck in at night when her defenses were lowest, the thought that paralyzed her whenever it came:  _ what if I’m not a girl? _

The first letter she sent was nearly two feet long. The school owl who Tonks found to deliver it looked quite put out. 

And so their correspondence began. With every letter Tonks wrote, a bit of the weight that had been dragging her down eased. With every letter she received, a bit of warmth began to take its place. But the warmth struggled to remain when Tonks left her dormitory. She wished she could always be the person she was with Remus. But there wasn’t room for that person at Hogwarts. It didn’t seem like there was room for that person anywhere. 

Tonks dragged herself out of the Hufflepuff common room one evening for dinner and found Charlie waiting for her in the corridor, his arms crossed over his chest. Tonks stopped, torn between annoyance and shame. She had been avoiding Charlie for a while now. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to see him— she missed him desperately. It was because she couldn’t lie to him. She was afraid that if he asked her how she was doing it would all come tumbling out, and he would learn what an embarrassing person Tonks really was.

“What’s up?” Tonks said, trying to sound normal.

“I want to get dinner together.”

“Okay.”

They walked to the Great Hall together mostly in silence. Charlie kept bringing up topics of conversation— Quidditch, a new breed of dragon that had been discovered in South America, exams. Tonks said little, and eventually Charlie gave up trying. They had reached the Entrance Hall when Charlie stopped walking and rounded on Tonks.

“You can tell me, you know?” he blurted. “Whatever’s going on. I told you I was gay. I tell you everything.” His face flushed the color of a tomato.

A hard lump rose in Tonks’s throat. “Can we not talk about this here?”

Charlie glanced around as if suddenly remembering they were surrounded by students hurrying to dinner. He took Tonks by the arm and guided her to the double doors, then out onto the twilit grounds. It was a mild evening, and there were still a few students milling around by the lake. Tiny figures on brooms circled the Quidditch Pitch, and a great cloud of birds erupted from the Forbidden Forest.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” Charlie said, sounding miserable. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

Tonks looked down at her feet in the grass. “I feel…” Tonks began. “I feel like maybe I’m not…” The words stuck in her throat. If she spoke them, she couldn’t take them back. Like vomiting slugs. If Charlie had said anything, Tonks might never have gotten the words out. But he stayed silent, absolutely still. “I feel like I’m sort of not a girl.”

“Oh,” Charlie said. He didn’t sound surprised. “That’s cool.”

Something in Tonks cringed. It wasn’t cool. Probably she was just making the whole thing up for attention anyway, or to explain why she was miserable when she had no right to be. And now Charlie was going to believe her and be supportive when Tonks didn’t deserve it.

“Maybe,” she said quickly. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry it’s been so hard,” Charlie said. He wrapped his hand around Tonks’s wrist. It should have been an awkward gesture, but it was so unexpected it loosened something inside Tonks and she let out a sob. Moments later she was crying into Charlie’s shoulder while he awkwardly patted her back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding bewildered. “Did I say something wrong?”

Tonks shook her head. 

It all happened in fits and starts. In a burst of confidence, Tonks asked Charlie to begin using they/them pronouns. They went around for a week with a buzzed head. Then, self-consciousness crept in. They grew their hair out long and kept their head down. They wrote three letters to their parents, and burned them all. They spent a few months trying out different names in the privacy of their dormitory, before deciding they liked Tonks best. One day, they allowed their body to morph in ways it never had before: thicker eyebrows, a flatter chest. The result terrified them, and they reverted to their most feminine appearance. But they couldn’t stop thinking about the way they had looked in the mirror. Like they were finally growing into their own body, or it was growing into them.

Over the summer, Andromeda received a letter from Remus Lupin asking if Tonks had permission to come visit him in London. She was surprised the letter came from Remus and not Sirius, who was, after all, her cousin. Andromeda hadn’t kept in close contact with any other members of the Black family since she married Ted, but she had kept tabs on Sirius from a distance. The lone Gryffindor, always a rebel. Shacking up with a werewolf who was also a man. She avoided Sirius because she didn’t know how to react to him. He terrified her, but only because he was braver than she was, more defiant than she would ever be.

She wrote back quickly, accepting the invitation on Tonks’s behalf. She wanted to ask her child about it, but she didn’t want to pry. The two of them had reached a fragile peace, and Andromeda didn’t want to ruin it. Instead she arranged Tonks’s travel plans through the Floo network and found a nice bottle of wine for Tonks to take as a gift.

Remus took one look at the kid who came spinning out of his fire and grinned. Tonks had short, spiky magenta hair and multiple piercings in each ear. They wore a Muggle shirt with a loud floral pattern and jeans under their robes. Sirius was going to be so pleased to see how the youngest generation of his family was turning out.

Despite their eye-catching appearance, Tonks seemed quite shy at first. They presented Remus with a bottle of wine in an overly formal manner, and stumbled over whether to call him “Remus” or “Mr. Lupin” (Remus told them firmly to use the former). When they entered the kitchen where Sirius was setting the table, Tonks’s jaw dropped.

“ _ You’re _ Remus’s boyfriend?” they said, all shyness forgotten.

Sirius grinned. “The one and only. You’re Dromeda’s kid? You look nothing like her.”

Tonks grinned in return, then rounded on Remus. “You didn’t tell me you were dating my cousin. And, like, a  _ war hero _ .”

Remus laughed. Tonks may never have met Sirius, but he could already tell they were going to get along famously. “Sirius and I both fought in the war,” he said. “I just didn’t get quite so much media attention.”

Before Tonks could respond, Harry popped his head into the kitchen. “Dad, this maths assignment is  _ hard _ .” He was talking to Remus, because no one in their right mind would ask Sirius for help with maths. But it was Sirius who responded.

“Harry, we have guests. Come introduce yourself.”

Harry sulked into the kitchen. “Hi,” he said to Tonks. “I’m Harry.”

Tonks shook his hand with a dazed expression, their eyes flitting to his forehead. “Um. Hello. I’m Tonks.”

“Now will you help me?” Harry whined, turning to Remus. Remus sighed and ruffled his son’s hair. 

“Ten minutes. Go to your room and try to get started on your own.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Harry did as he was told.

“ _ You didn’t tell me your son was Harry Potter _ ,” Tonks hissed.

Remus exchanged a glance with Sirius. Not many people knew they had adopted Harry after his parents’ death— safer that way, for everyone. Remus was used to thinking of Harry as his son, but when other people said it, he felt a flicker of guilt, thinking of Lily and James. It was silly, he knew. He wondered if it would ever fade.

“I promise, there are no more surprises,” Remus said to Tonks, who looked a bit disappointed. “Come on, let’s eat. I want to hear all about Hogwarts.”

Tonks found it so easy to talk to Remus that they barely shut up the whole lunch. They talked about Professor McGonagall’s ridiculous summer homework assignment (Sirius agreed with them wholeheartedly on that), about how weird their mother was, about the job Charlie had secured in Romania for after he graduated. Occasionally Remus and Sirius exchanged cryptic smiles, but it didn’t bother Tonks. They were sitting across the table from two war heroes, two openly gay war heroes who were raising the Boy Who Lived. Charlie would absolutely lose it if he knew.

As Tonks was on their way out, saying goodbye in front of the Floo, they said,

“Do you think I could visit again sometime?”

“Anytime you like,” Remus said, at the same time as Sirius said, “Of course!”

“And...could I bring my friend Charlie?”

“If Molly’ll allow it,” Sirius said. “She still thinks I’m ‘irresponsible.’ Always invites Harry round to her place, never lets Ron come here.”

“Oh, stop,” Remus said. “I’m sure it will be just fine.”

Tonks grinned. They had one foot in the flames before they remembered to say thank you, so they shouted it behind them as they disappeared.

The first day of seventh year, Tonks marched into the castle with Charlie by their side, head held high. In July, they had told their parents they were nonbinary. Then they explained to their parents what nonbinary meant. Andromeda had lots of questions, the answers to which seemed to make her increasingly nervous. Ted was amiably baffled. They both agreed to use Tonks’s new pronouns, and they had been calling them “Tonks” for a while now anyway. In August, Tonks wrote a letter to Professor McGonagall, asking her to inform the staff of the change. The letter of agreement they received in response was terse, but Tonks thought they detected the hidden warmth.

“Is it just me,” Charlie said as they filed into the Great Hall for the feast. “Or does Hogwarts seem smaller this year?”

Tonks stared up at the ceiling, which reflected the dusk falling outside. “A little,” they said. They suspected Charlie had been spending too much time around dragons during his summer internship. Everything probably seemed small to him now. 

During the welcome speech, Tonks watched Charlie. He didn’t look like a kid anymore. His hair was short, with a slight undercut, and there was barely-visible stubble on his chin. His shoulders were broad, and his too-small robes left inches of his wrists bare. Tonks wondered how their own body looked to an outsider. They didn’t feel like a person who had grown into their own body. They felt...in progress. They didn’t yet know where they were going or even what they wanted, but for the moment, that was okay.

Pomona Sprout poked her head into the Hufflepuff common room at midnight as she did every year on the first night of school, to make sure there were no homesick first years crying by the fire. She was shocked to find a four-poster bed planted in the middle of the floor, with all the rest of the furniture shoved aside to make room for it. Tonks lay in the bed, reading a book by wandlight.

“What on Earth is going on?” Pomona asked.

Tonks took a moment to finish their page, then closed the book and smiled brightly at their head of house. “There isn’t a dormitory for me, professor. I’m not a girl or a boy.”

Pomona opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again. Part of her— the part thinking longingly of her own mattress— wanted to tell Tonks to stop being silly. After all, the child had slept in the girl’s dormitory for six years already— what was one more? But she also knew better. Pomona hadn’t heard the word “nonbinary” until McGonagall explained it to her, but she knew what it was like not to fit in. When the other girls in her year had teased her at school, she had longed for a place of her own. Tonks wasn’t teased at school— they were quite well-liked, in fact. But they needed a place of their own. And who knew— maybe there were other children looking for just such a place too.

“Sweet dreams, then,” Pomona said, leaving them to their reading.

The next morning, Pomona convened a meeting of the Heads of House. 

“This couldn’t have waited til the afternoon?” Filius grumbled, nursing a cup of tea almost as big as his head.

“I’m sorry, no,” Pomona said. “I believe we need to ask the castle to change.”

Several sleepy faces blinked back at her.

“I know it hasn’t been done in years— decades— but there’s a serious flaw. We need to change the dormitories.”

“Ah,” Minerva said. She alone looked well-rested. “I see. We had better go talk to Albus.”

The changing of the castle couldn’t happen with students inside it, but Professors Sprout and McGonagall had been adamant it happen before the holidays. So on a mild October evening, the children were turned out onto the grounds. The ghosts followed, hovering above the chattering mass of students like misplaced chandeliers. The professors formed a circle around the castle, wands raised, and Dumbledore, standing in the entryway with his arms outstretched, cast a great shivering ball of magic into the castle’s heart.

Tonks lounged against a tree by the lake, chewing on a licorice wand while they watched. 

“Isn’t it exciting?” Charlie said, crouched next to them.

Tonks shrugged. But inside their insides were squirming. Sprout and McGonagall and Flitwick and Dumbledore— they were doing this all for  _ Tonks _ . It was too big, too extravagant. It made Tonks want to crawl into a hole and disappear.

Charlie nudged them with his elbow. “It’s not just for you, you know,” he said, effortlessly plucking the thoughts from Tonks’s mind. “You’re not the only one.”

Sometimes, it felt that way. But Tonks knew it couldn’t be true. If it hadn’t been for Charlie, and a book, and McGonagall, and Remus, Tonks might never have realized it, might never have had the courage to say it out loud. They would live their life with a vague feeling of homesickness, never sure what exactly it was they longed for. 

Tonks closed their eyes and leaned their head on Charlie’s shoulder. “Weird night,” they said. 

“Weird night,” Charlie agreed. 

And Tonks was pretty sure that when he said it, he meant  _ I love you too _ .


End file.
